Ben's recommendations for upgrading

[Ben]

I recently upgraded a site from DEV 1.1.9 to DEV 1.2.1 and it occurred flawlessly! I sometimes read of people having unrecoverable issues when upgrading, so I thought I'd offer my 2 cents.

Aside from backing up all of the files and database, I would recommend the following as a fail-safe upgrade method that will leave your old installation intact while also allowing you to upgrade. It's not rocket surgery, just common sense.

1. Copy all files and database from the original version to your local PC.
2. Upload all files for the new version that you are going to upgrade to a subfolder, such as /upgrade
3. Create a new database and call it something like wcms121 and add a user, etc.
4. Upload the mySQL dump from your old installation to the new database.
5. Copy up the files from the old version's /phpwcms_filestorage to /upgrade/phpcms_filestorage.
6. Copy up any other layout images that you may have, as well as files from /picture
7. Go to http://www.domain.com/upgrade/setup/setup.php and run the installation script, but be careful not to create the database tables. You just want to create config.inc.php file and set folder permissions. NOTE: don't forget to connect to the new database, not the old. After you're done, upload the conf.inc.php file to the new installation.
8. Go to http://www.domain.com/upgrade/setup/setup.php and click the link to upgrade your installation.
9. Carefully follow the provided instructions.
10. If your upgrade attempts fail, it is of no consequence because your original installation was not touched.
11. If your upgrade attempts are successful, you may want to move the old installation into a /old folder and move the upgraded installation into the root. You'll just need to change the appropriate variables in conf.inc.php to keep it all running.
12. You'll probably want to go through frontend.css and conf.template_default.inc.php by hand to add in any changes made to the old version's styles.

What's nice about this upgrade path is that if you need to log into the old installation to grab a template or something that didn't work out in the upgrade, you can easily do it. Hopefully my instructions have been clear and will help someone.

[trip]

nice, simple and to the point...
thanks
TriP

[rescamilla]

Wow, even following the above instructions, the upgrade process was tuff. I hit and miss about 5 times before I finally got it right.

The only problem I am having now: I am having to go through all of my articles and assign them from "{0}" to "main column {CONTENT}" (by editing each content part).

I have hundreds of articles with thousands of content parts, so this make take some time. Did anybody else have this problem and is there a quick fix?

Thanks!
-Ray

P.s. The upgrade is definetly worth it, thanks to Oliver once again!

[magnushelander]

Made a perfect, clean upgrade to latest with these instructions,
thanks a lot!
/magnus

[trip]

Hi all I would like to let you know, I have just done a huge upggrade from

phpWcms_1.1-RC2_2004-02-20

All went smoothly except for this ... error on cache ... solution here
http://www.phpwcms.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5978

However I have the same problem as rescamilla with the {0} and {CONTENT}

any ideas?

[trip]

I have just upgraded from Release 1.1-RC4 27-08-2004 >> DEV 1.2.1

All went smoothly and so far everything has been recognised.

One question, how do the images and files get recognised?
This is a very important step, and it seems that they are not found...any idea?

regards
TriP

[miershpedankl]

Ok - what a great tutorial Ben! Too bad I tried the upgrade w/out reading it. I am hoping someone can help me here. I just tried the upgrade to 1.2.7 but I am getting,

"We are sorry! For service reasons the system is temporarily not attainable. Visit us later again!"

Everything checks "ok" at the end of the install, but I did run /setup rather than setup/upgrade.php. Am I out of luck on this one? Since I ran the install rather than the upgrade will I need to start over with my site? BTW - I backed-up my files, but I did not back up my db's... I just jumped the gun on everything here, sheesh . I see the tutorial at: http://www.phpwcms-docu.de/dbbackup_en.phtml for the db backup. Any help would be great b/c I am at a loss here.

THANKS!

[Ben]

Oops! Ask your web host if they can restore the database from their most recent backup and tell them what day and time you messed it up.

[miershpedankl]

Holy Crap, they're asking for $150 to restore the database!! Not good. Is there any other way, or would I have to start from scratch? That is most definately the problem, eh?

Thanks Ben